


Slight return

by aesc



Series: Extended Jam 'Verse [1]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Charles You Will Be Drunk, Graduate School, M/M, and possibly high
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-04
Updated: 2011-08-09
Packaged: 2017-10-22 05:00:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesc/pseuds/aesc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Charles only thinks he's only getting a lift to a conference, and Erik has other ideas. Or, it's July 1969 and there are more important things going on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I've written in, good lord, almost a year or something horrific like that. Then I saw X-Men: First Boyfriends not long ago and procrastinated on my work by reading a bunch of fic and couldn't resist.
> 
> The title is the second title from Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)," off Electriclady Land. You should listen to it, it is amazing.

**Chapter one**

It starts that morning at the stop outside South Station, when Charles gets a faceful of exhaust from the departing bus. The driver honks the horn as he lurches out into traffic and Charles, heaving for breath and half-mad with adrenaline, hears the cheerful _fuck you_ as clearly as if the driver had spoken it out loud. The faces of his former fellow passengers, gazing at him dispassionately from behind the windows (except for one little shit who flat-out _smirks_ at him), don't help. Only etiquette and the sting of conscience keep him from ordering the driver to drive off the road; they do not, however, keep him from sending the little shit a heartfelt subliminal suggestion that one day his penis will fall off.

"Bugger, bugger, fuck, and _shit_."

Cursing can't change the fact that he's missed his train by ten minutes, a victim of timetables that lied and a bus driver who sloshed over at the edges with a hangover. Charles makes himself breathe deeply and reach for the sort of calm associated with adult and respectable people. Unfortunately, frustration puts cracks in the wall and he catches flickers of what the people around him see: a disheveled, red-faced young man with sweat sticking his hair to his forehead gazing with a mixture of despair and fury after the vanishing back end of a bus. He holds a leather satchel and a suitcase and wears a blazer too heavy for an early-summer Boston day, and altogether looks dismayed and overheated and forlorn. The porter can't decide whether or not to pity him; the cluster of teenagers nearby have decided against pity altogether and are unanimous in their contempt.

"Shit," Charles says again, but more feebly this time.

An approach to the information booth inside the station brings Charles the intelligence of two things: that the next train to New York is booked solid, and that the one following is booked solid too. For that matter – the clerk imparts this with a certain degree of satisfaction – they're sold out for the rest of the day.

"You could try the Greyhound," the clerk adds, indifferent to Charles's suffering. She favors him with a glance that unites overwhelming scorn and disinterest; the air around her radiates with it and Charles closes himself off hastily. "Or you could rent a car."

"It's the principle of the thing," Charles mutters as he picks up his now-useless ticket and stalks off. It's also the principle of living in a big city specifically for the purpose of not having to drive. His genius resides in areas other than behind the wheel.

Principle, bad luck, or whatever it is, has him standing in the blinding sun outside South Station, frowning in consternation at the line of traffic poking by. If he could get down to New York City by bus, he could maybe, by some miracle, catch a train that would have him in D.C. not long after dinner, or resign himself to a bus ride the rest of the way. He's not, Charles decides as he sorts himself out and begins the hunt for his wallet, above telepathically suggesting to someone that they give up their seat for him if the bus happens to be sold out.

He shuffles through the contents of his satchel, pushing aside pens, the metal puzzle he carries with him, keys, scraps of notepaper and, on the edge of panic, finally finds his wallet. After a minute of frustrated muttering and sifting through the ten thousand cards he's accumulated– student ID, state ID, library card, lab pass, museum passes – he finds a small, crumpled wad of bills that might get him onto a bus and to the conference, assuming he can find the energy to slog his way to the nearest stop. As he studies the money and considers the distance between Boston and D.C., Charles wonders if a chance to speak at the premiere conference in his discipline is actually worth it.

Temporarily at a loss, Charles sits down on one of the uncomfortable benches that litter the station's streetside entrance. A stray newspaper, blown along by the breeze of passing cars, catches against his foot and he considers it absently as he frets at a worn corner of a dollar bill. Withdrawals in Vietnam, unrest in Libya, another nuclear test by Russia, and in the United States protests over minority rights, protests over women's rights, mutant rights, the war; MIT and the surrounding campuses, out for the summer, still seethe with the same energy and uncertainty, and most of what Charles gets from people these days is a restlessness that crawls under his skin and stays there.

Distancing himself from it takes some work, enough that he almost wishes for the calm and quiet of his family's home. As he pulls back into himself, he catches the edge of someone's impatience, like a glimpse of something shocking in the corner of his eye. It's deliberate, targeted, and targeted, he realizes _at him_ , projected as a silent _look at me, look at me_ in the way someone thinks if they want a telepath to notice them.

He looks up.

"Need a ride?"

Charles is _not_ about to use phrases like "knight in shining armor" to describe Erik Lehnsherr, because, first of all, Erik is not anything approaching knightly (you don't need to be a telepath to figure that out), and second, he's stretched lazily and indecently behind the wheel of a battered Mustang, disreputable himself in jeans and a t-shirt that, like the sprawl of Erik's body, is also indecent. Erik regards him from behind the obscurity of his sunglasses, a smirk playing around the edges of that extraordinary mouth as though he can't be bothered to hide it. Satisfaction rolls off him like the heat mirages off the Mustang's hood.

When Charles doesn't move, Erik gestures impatiently, a _come here_ flicker of long fingers. Charles gets up and, after a suspicious pause, sidles closer, trying to sort out the emotion and sensation everyone – even people as closed-off as Erik Lehnsherr – bleeds out: that satisfaction, interest (utterly puzzling), anticipation, all of it like a shot of caffeine straight to Charles's heart. As a telepath, most people are open books to him if he wants them to be, but if Erik's a book, he's written in some code that Charles sometimes feels he should know, but can't quite decipher. He gives up trying and settles for staring narrowly at Erik, who stares right back.

"I missed my train," Charles says, to say anything. Erik nods, mouth flexing in something resembling sympathy.

"I'll give you a lift," Erik says, and inclines his head meaningfully at the empty passenger seat.

Part of him wants to seize on the offer like a drowning man latching onto a piece of driftwood. Or, Charles supposes, a drowning man latching onto a passing shark, because Erik's sudden smile is all tooth and fierce pleasure, recklessness in the margins. Charles tries to shrug off the sudden burst of interest and the seductive _you know you want to_ that Erik doesn't even bother to smother under politer surface thoughts.

"I'm going to Washington," Charles reminds him.

Erik nods patiently.

"For the weekend."

"I know." Erik rolls his eyes and asks again, with deliberate emphasis this time, " _Do you want a ride_?"

One of the benefits of being a telepath is that other people rarely surprise him. Erik Lehnsherr, for reasons both infuriating and intriguing, is one of the few who can do it.

Charles has never met anyone who unnerves him in the way Erik's managed to, and they don't even _know_ each other all that well. And apparently Charles is capable of surprising himself; without consciously willing it, he has his briefcase and suitcase stuffed into the backseat and, after shoving a leather jacket across the seat, has himself installed next to Erik. Erik favors him with his terrifying grin before turning his attention back to the road and, with a howl of engine, explodes into traffic.

"Do you like The Doors?" Erik asks, and without waiting for Charles's answer flicks the radio on and begins to sing.

* * *

Raven had left for California and school two weeks back, her departure mixed in with and masked by the chaos of their moving. But now that he was installed in his new flat, he ached with loneliness. Raven had been with him through everything, or at least everything important – London, their father's death, their mother's remarriage – and not having her here… it was selfish, he knew, but he couldn't help reaching for her.

His new roommate helped a little. Moira specialized in technology, mutagenesis, and public policy, and her mind was something he found he could lean against, practical and well-ordered, a little playfulness and not much fear. Her aunt had been one of the agents who'd worked with the first mutants in the covert programs against the Soviets in the forties and fifties, she'd told him, and she hadn't stood for any of the fear or prejudice. Moira seemed ready to accept him for his own sake, unlike MIT, which had accepted him because academic institutions were quick to snap up anyone who might improve their reputation, mutant or not. All she asked was privacy, which basic decency said she should get anyway, and if Charles had girlfriends over to keep it down, and do his share of the chores.

She also strong-armed him into going to the new graduate student mixer, a terribly misguided attempt at inter-departmental socialization, Charles thought. Moira's mention of free alcohol roped him in, although he made a show of having too much work, even before the semester started.

The mixer was, as predicted, an exercise in awkwardness. A clutch of humanities students huddled in the corner, the physicists had taken over the table with the alcohol, and the chemistry, biology, and engineering students formed their own islands here and there in the gloom of the student center. Charles registered bits of conversation, stray thoughts, patchouli and incense and someone's terrible cologne, unmistakable interest when most of the guys realized Moira was gorgeous, and one of a handful of women in the room. Moira rolled her eyes – you didn't need to be a telepath to figure out what went through a twenty-something man's head – and made for the beer.

Over in another corner, aloof and disinterested, was Erik Lehnsherr, although Charles didn't know it at the time. He caught Charles's eye like sudden movement, a tug on the sleeve of his awareness, and, caught, Charles couldn't help but _look_.

* * *

That chance meeting four years ago is the prequel to the awkwardness that is sitting next to Erik Lehnsherr, watching as he drives with one hand while levitating and weaving a coin through the fingers of the other. Charles thinks about pointing out safe driving practice, but gratitude and an awareness of the hypocrisy that would be him pointing out the bad driving habits of others keeps his mouth shut. Next to him, Erik still grins and sings, a bit more softly now, along to Johnny Cash. In front of them, the traffic crawls slowly southward into New York.

"Why," Charles ventures, "are you doing this?"

Erik shrugs elegantly. "No particular reason. It seemed like the thing to do." He slants a look at Charles from behind his sunglasses. "I don't suppose you could…"

"I could what?" Charles can't pick apart what he's getting from Erik, a knotty thread of interest, curiosity, mockery, _contentment_ of all things, with the two of them stuck on I-95 and in the fringes of the Bronx.

"You know." Erik wiggles his fingers, his very long, capable fingers, in a vague gesture next to his forehead. "Move things along?"

"You mean like…" Erik smirks and, okay, he _does_ mean like "use your telepathy to tell people to get out of our way." Charles tries to calculate exactly how many rules, written and unwritten, this sort of thing will break. "I could get _arrested_ ," he hisses, when the count reaches northward of fifteen – reckless use of powers, unlicensed use of telepathy without consent, probably aiding and abetting because Erik's likely got something illegal in the trunk, he could go on. When his very salient point doesn't dent Erik's grin, he adds, " _You_ could get arrested," and that doesn't seem to help, either.

"I'm sure you could scan the area and work out if there are any telepaths around lying in wait to report us," Erik says lazily. "Also, do you want to get to D.C. today or tomorrow?"

He has a point. The interior of the Mustang is mercilessly hot, and smells like smoke and Erik – leather and sweat and the coffee they'd ended up splitting after Erik had spilled his– and it's still hours until D.C. Weeks, with the traffic.

"Okay," he says, and deliberately ignores the triumph that's coming off Erik in waves as he concentrates.

He reaches out with his power, and sweet god it's a rush after months and months of having to throttle himself back and keep to the rules MIT sets for students "with extra abilities." It's like flexing a muscle, stretching into movement after being still for years; it hurts and it's wonderful, and he's vaguely aware he's grinning madly, helpless, disbelieving laughter pulled from him because it's _perfect_. He wants to wander off into the labyrinth of the city, the minds buzzing down the streets and their energy not masked in the least by brick or concrete or glass, or even the deep, deep down of the subways. The effort is bringing himself back to the long, winding road in front of him, and organizing the thoughts of a hundred drivers to, please, _move over_.

It works. Next to him, Erik shines with awe and victory and pleasure as he watches the cars and trucks, one by one, file slowly into the driving lane. A tractor-trailer creeping up the entrance ramp stops cooperatively, long enough to let Erik ease the Mustang by and change lanes, and then the reflective surface of the highway stretches out in front of them – "Twenty miles," Charles says hoarsely, even though his effective range is more than ten times that – there are a lot of minds jammed into two lanes of interstate, and he's lamentably out of practice.

Erik shoves a canteen of water at him. At least, Charles assumes it's water – possibly not a safe bet with Erik – but he's thirsty enough not to take a first careful sip. It _is_ water, thank god, and hell if it tastes metallic and is almost as warm as the interior of the car. As Erik picks up speed, the breeze freshens, still hot and stinking of diesel, but it dries the worst of the sweat. Almost idly, he searches ahead, quietly ordering traffic, watching absently as the drivers in the rearview begin to drift back into the passing lane.

Looking back over his shoulder, Erik laughs. His grin is genuinely terrifying, unadulterated pleasure in Charles, Charles and what he's done, and he's not even bothering to hide it.

Charles quickly comes back to himself, and the world closes in again and goes silent. Wordlessly, he thrusts the canteen back at Erik, who refuses to take it.

"You'll need to keep this up until traffic clears," Erik says. He's turned the radio down a bit, Charles realizes. Erik continues, "I'd do it myself, but people tend to notice when their cars don't do what they tell them to."

"Oh, so at least I'm breaking the law wisely," Charles says sarcastically. "Cool."

Erik laughs his lovely, dangerous laugh. God, _lovely_. For a moment, Charles wonders if he's managed to trip himself out, using his powers like this, too much too soon.

"I'm pretty sure you signed the same agreement I did," Charles snaps, "you know, the one where we agree to abide by – "

"'Regulations intended to promote the welfare of all student groups at MIT, and to preserve the image and integrity of MIT as an institute of advanced learning,'" Erik says with a deliberate and singsong mockery. "Bullshit."

"Do you _want_ the Supreme Court to reverse its decision on the MRA? Because this – "

"No, of course not," Erik growls. The Mustang's engine roars as he stomps on the gas. Traffic starts to thicken again, and before, _Jesus_ , before he knows what he's doing, he directs it all into the other lane, easier this time. Erik snickers quietly, and he's still talking about _why should we suppress who we are?_ and _if you think this existence should be the status quo, then you are seriously fucking stupid_ , but his thoughts run louder than the words do, a lifetime of frustration and anger like thorns.

It reminds Charles of Raven, who can legally go out as blue-skinned and yellow-eyed as she wants, but has to put up with a ton of shit if she does. It's why she went to Berkeley in the first place; most mutants with "unconventional" or visible mutations head out there, or to Iowa, or any one of the more radical campuses. "Your mom and dad wanted me to be someone I'm not," she'd said when she'd showed him her acceptance letter, _you wanted me to be someone I'm not_ , and it hurts thinking about that. She'd been right, of course, because Raven could understand people in a way Charles sometimes can't.

"Why don't you go out west, then?" he asks.

Erik shrugs. He's staring straight ahead, coaxing the Mustang to speeds that are certainly illegal (Charles sends a few suggestions to lurking cops that they not notice any of this), fingers absently rubbing the leather of the wheel.

"I've been offered a predoc at the Berkeley Lab," he says almost casually. "A chance to work on the design for a new cyclotron. I might go."

Charles tries not to wonder why the announcement feels like Erik's punched him right under the ribcage. "Nice," he says.

* * *

"Who's the cat over there?" One of Moira's friends – human, technology and policy like Moira, but unlike Moira bland and white-bread – pointed to the tall guy lurking in the corner. With a face like that, Charles couldn't quite believe there weren't at least a few girls in orbit around him, a face whose geometry was hawkish angles with not much to soften them, lean body, the sort of dramatic good looks Charles associated with movie stars. There was interest, Charles could sense that much, but no one strayed close, or if they did, they didn't stay very long.

Intrigued, but not enough to bend the rules – at least, not this soon – Charles settled into a superficially bored silence and, under the guise of being preoccupied with his drink, listened to the speculation. "Genetics and psychodynamics," he'd mumbled when the white-bread friend asked what it was that he did, and "Roommates," when _another_ one of Moira's friends, Levine, asked how they knew each other. The beer, weak and warm and thoroughly offensive, didn't loosen him up enough to go roaming around people's minds and learn how to draw them out and dispel the stiffness.

When he'd been younger and more optimistic about these things, he'd found friendliness smoothed down the spikes of awkwardness and made others want to reach out to him and be friends in turn. But adults aren't kids, and most of the time Charles found there wasn't much of a point in trying to make friends when people got skittish around telepaths. Legislation was one thing, people actually accepting what he was – that was something else altogether.

For most of his life, his only friend had been Raven. He'd been okay with that, for the most part.

* * *

They stop for lunch at a diner in New Jersey, its exterior shiny white enamel and metal and its interior crowded and sticky with years of grease fires and ketchup. The booths are built for children, and certainly not for people like Erik, whose mile-long legs will either obstruct the aisle or get tangled up with Charles's. Charles is about to gnaw his own hand off with desperation, and doesn't care that he has to suggest one pair of diners ahead of them in line go elsewhere.

The waitress needs a year, or so it seems, to get their order out to them: iced tea, double bacon cheeseburger, extra French fries, and an extra-large chocolate shake, and that's just Charles's.

"Damn," Erik says.

 _You didn't try to tell ten thousand people what to do_ , he tells Erik crossly, and figures if Erik has a problem with someone talking directly into his head, too bad for him. For himself, Charles is too busy trying to inhale his cheeseburger whole. Erik watches him, sardonic curl to the corner of his mouth.

"You _have_ eaten this week, right honey?" the waitress asks when she stops by to refill their iced tea. Charles, overstimulated by the drive, can't help but read the _bored-amused-concerned-god-my-feet-hurt_ she exudes along with her strange perfume of sweat, grease, and rosewater. The other patrons, mostly business people, some vacationers headed for the shore, mostly devote themselves to hunger, their thoughts an annoying song played at the edge of his hearing.

Two people are bitching quietly about recent "pro-mutant" legislation. One of them is sincerely a bigot who thinks the government should ship mutants off to Genosha and not be requiring all public schools to offer special "ability-oriented" classes, because it's bad enough schools have to let in the black kids. The other one nods along, because it's easier to nod along than tell an asshole to shut up.

"You should do something about that," Erik says, and adds speculatively, "maybe I will."

Charles has a good line of sight to the bigot, and he'd _love_ to implant some small, festering suggestion – that he's been eating piss instead of chicken soup, that his wife is about to leave him in favor of his friend (a fear already present, but one Charles idly toys with exploiting) – but Erik's already headed down the path of vengeance.

"Does he have a car here?" Erik asks quietly, and Charles, without thinking much, filches the information from the bigot's brain and says, "Red Fairlane, second from the end."

He pretends to be absorbed in his cheeseburger (which is not nearly big enough; he needs another) and Erik pretends to be absorbed in his club sandwich, and they both pretend not to notice the red Fairlane easing slowly back from its parking space, rolling across the car park, and out into Route 1. Erik doesn't even bother looking up at the screech of brakes and metal grinding together shrilly. Charles has to look up, though, hoping Erik hasn't brought an innocent person to disaster for the sake of revenge.

The Fairlane cradles a lamppost in its dented roof, its windshield concave and spiderwebbed with broken glass. Consternated drivers try to edge around it; Charles can see the silhouettes of their heads as they turn to look. The rest of the diners in the Premium are on their feet, peering out the window, and the commotion distracts the bigot from his rant enough to look up.

"My car!" the bigot yelps, scrambling to his feet. Chicken soup goes everywhere, including all over his friend. "Son of a bitch, my _car_!"

"There," Erik says calmly. He offers Charles a beatific smile and steals a French fry.

After the bigot leaves to lament over the corpse of the Fairlane, the diner settles down to normal. Maybe more amusement this time, and the collective shadenfreude is an odd cool-warm glow as distracting as the chaos. The waitress brings another chocolate shake (for Charles) and more of her preoccupation and disbelief – "Where _are_ you putting all of this, dear?" – and Charles suddenly has a headache. He thanks her with a strained expression and as much politeness as he can muster, and quietly asks for her to get the check.

Focusing on Erik helps. He sort of hates and sort of loves that it does, because Erik's always drawn his attention like… well, like a magnet, ever since that stupid party when Charles had sensed his power without any kind of effort. His thoughts are something else altogether, emotion cool on top, like still water, something to rest on even though something dangerous – compelling –stirs underneath.

"Are you going to be done eating any time this week?" Erik asks. He's appropriated Charles's cigarettes, _Pall Mall, British label?_ is the thought, and Erik's mouth curves with amusement. "How terribly Oxfordian of you." Erik's imitation of Charles's accent is blisteringly accurate. A lighter drifts up from the pocket of his ever-present leather jacket, and in a moment Erik's drawing a mouthful of smoke, lips curved neatly around the cigarette, and expelling a satisfied breath.

"So," Charles asks as he picks his way through the few French fries Erik hasn't stolen, "I know I've asked, but why, exactly, are you here? I mean," he adds, before Erik can say something smartassed, like _Do you mean existentially?_ , "I'm pretty sure it's not charity. Are you running drugs or something? Taking over the government?"

Erik's laugh is almost a purr. "You could just…" he does the wiggly fingers again, "and find out. You could know everything about me." He lingers, beautifully, on the _everything_.

He could, Charles knows, and that's the temptation that hasn't run its course in almost four years.

* * *

In September 1950, Dr. Brian Xavier was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities to testify on the presence of suspected Communists in Alamagordo and at Columbia University. The following year, on account of his affiliation with Alamagordo and suspected Communists there, a federal court called him to testify in the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

"Among the files decrypted by the Signals Intelligence Service there is a reference to 'the exploitation of posthuman or enhanced-human soldiers at Alamagordo as key to American security objectives,'" the Justice Department attorney said. "Would you know anything about that?"

"I'm a nuclear physicist," Dr. Xavier said irritably. "Of course not."

The next year, an unnamed source approached the _Daily Bugle_ with extensive information on a secret government program engaged in designing the posthuman and enhanced-human soldiers Brian Xavier denied knowing about. Almost casually, he dropped in a reference to the slaughter of three hundred African-American soldiers at Camp Cathcart, the casualties of the military's failed experiments. The deaths of three hundred black soldiers vaguely disturbed the public, but the suggestion that the government might be perpetrating disturbing acts on young white men – and the suggestion that the Soviets were probably doing the same – triggered a wave of paranoia and protests even from the most staunch supporters of the war in Korea. Appeals to patriotism couldn't quite stem the tide, and the public demanded answers.

Two weeks before he was scheduled to meet privately with Senator McCarthy to discuss the leak, Brian Xavier died in an explosion at his facility in Alamagordo. A week later, a courier delivered his files to the same reporter who had broken the Cathcart scandal, and the truth about posthumans, as J. Jonah Jameson wrote, "went public."

* * *

Occasionally, Charles wonders what his life would have been like if no one – not his father, not the public, certainly not the damned government– had known about mutants, what it would have been like to have his powers to himself. When he'd been younger, he and Raven would pretend they were king and queen of a whole realm of people like them, or sometimes the carriers of a mystical secret who had to evade the machinations of evil and shadowy figures, usually represented by the household staff and Charles's mother.

"Does it matter if people _do_ know?" Erik asks impatiently. He gestures around them – at the moment, the people concerned are crossing from New Jersey into Delaware – and snorts. "Why should you care what they think of your powers, or how you use them? Is that the only difference, what people _think_?"

"For a telepath, it's a big difference," Charles retorts. "Imagine people looking at you like a freak, or like you're _unnatural_ , every time you tell them what you are."

"I'm Jewish," Erik tells him. "I know a bit about that."

"Now imagine you can hear and feel them thinking it."

"You try too hard to be like everyone else," Erik says at last, after a pause that includes Big Brother and the Holding Company, and Charles mentally shuffling a slow driver into another lane. "That's all the damned Society talks about, is how to _integrate_."

Personally, Charles finds MIT's Society for Mutant Graduate Students to be unbearably ridiculous and twee. They have embarrassing T-shirts – "Mutant/Posthuman and _Proud_!" – and spend most of their time arguing the semantics of calling themselves _mutants_ or _posthumans_ and complaining about work. No one uses their powers or talks about them much, or did, the one meeting Charles went to.

"I suppose if you were in charge you'd stage a coup and take over the administration," Charles laughs.

"I would," Erik says reflectively. "Although, why stop there?" He drums his fingers against the wheel in time to a blistering Hendrix solo, "Voodoo Child," and Charles nods his head along absently to the beat, only half paying attention to whatever megalomania is coming out of Erik's face. Erik pushes it at him quietly, though, his thoughts softly persuasive, _you know why they regulate us, why they control us, you of all people should know, and why let them do it? Why let them when you can change their minds?_

The pounding in Charles's head keeps time with the long, growling throb of the Mustang's engine. He's hot, far too full from lunch, his shirt sticking to him in ways that make him squirm, he's cultivating a sunburn on his right arm, and Erik's interrogation pushes him past his usual patience.

"Can we _please_ just fuck off and not talk about this?" Charles rolls his eyes and pays for it with a knifepoint of pain in his temple. "Seriously, is it _that_ important?"

"I've had relatives die for what they are," Erik says chillingly. "My father sacrificed himself so my mother could take me and get on a boat to Sweden. _Don't_ …" He trails off, and he must have caught the look on Charles's face, or maybe Charles – shit, he's _projecting_ , which isn't bad but it's sloppy as hell, regret and _I shouldn't have said that_ and he finds himself babbling about his bitching death headache, and he gets it, he _gets it_ , but he can't – "Later," he says to Erik's angry-sad-confused expression. "I know it's important."

"Go to sleep," Erik says curtly, and turns glowering back to the road. "I'll wake you if I need traffic taken care of. Or if the police stop us."

"We're okay," Charles tells him. The nearest cop interested in speeders is ten miles away. The sun is potent on his face, the overwarm stretch between his neck and collar bones, and the exhaustion is somewhere between the awful kind – he hadn't counted on a mutant rights conversation with Erik fucking Lehnsherr – and the good kind – doing what he's made to do, what he's _supposed to do_.

Drowsily, he supposes Erik's right. The conclusion slips through his fingers and he thinks about chasing it, but heads down into sleep instead.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter two**

The one time Charles tried to talk to his mother about his abilities had been when he was seven.

It had happened in a small tea parlor, the only one worth going to in Westchester, as far as his mother had been concerned. An older English couple owned it, and Charles had known his mother found them soothing, with their accents (public-school, he had gone to Eton and moved to the States before the war), their imported tea, the customers _just like her_. All of this was terribly important to his mother. When she settled into her damasked chair, when she set their tea to steep and surveyed the table with its carefully-arranged, fussy porcelain and sterling silver, her memories filled with cozy, cultured rooms Charles had never seen, and contentment.

It almost made her pleasant to be around. Most times Charles would keep quiet and try to be well-behaved and not desperately bored, but not today, not with the strange, anticipatory excitement of being close to someone who was _just like him_.

"That lady over there is different."

"Hm?" His mother was fuzzy with preoccupation. "What was that, dearest?"

 _Dearest_ , as was usually the case, did not have the sorts of feelings Charles thought ought to be attached to such a word. His mother had been studying the menu of tea sandwiches for the better part of five minutes, but her thoughts had long since wandered – to the hospital charity gala she'd been called on to run, her husband's return from New Mexico the next day, the wretched difficulty of finding a nanny willing to put up with _that child_ (her way of thinking about Raven) at a price somewhat less than extortionate. Charles swallowed anger at that, and at how quickly his mother's thoughts slid away into distraction again.

"That lady," Charles said again, more emphatically, and pointed at the lady in question. "She's _different_. She _feels_ different."

His mother glanced over at the young woman, alone in her corner table. "It's not nice to say such things about strangers, Charles. Remember what we talked about?" Charles nodded sulkily. "And don't point, dearest. It's not polite."

The next day, with his father home, he tried again.

"That's what we call a _secondary mutation_ ," his father said with obvious pride and excitement. He ruffled Charles's hair. "Could you tell what she could do?"

"No," Charles said. "Only that she was like me."

"Good, good."

They were out on the grounds, a fine spring day with a breeze to cut the slowly-growing heat and Charles's hand clasped in his father's large, warm one. Ahead of them, Raven frolicked in a private game, her mind a cup of childish happiness.

"You mustn't talk about this with other people," his father said, turning serious.

"But _why_?"

The list was long, _because people like you, Charles, are very new and no one knows quite what to think yet, because some people don't understand, because the government is nervous about things that are different, because you can pass for any other human being and ought not to use your abilities unless you need them, it's to be safe_. Cut in with it, like footage from the newsreels, were flickers of a place with white walls and steel panels, and an important-looking room with an important-looking man behind the desk. "When people learn the government's been experimenting on their fellow citizens, Brian, there'll be hell to pay," said the important-looking man. _Because people are afraid of what's different_.

"Do you understand, Charles?" his father asked.

"I do," Charles said.

"Good," his father said, and called for Raven not to wander too far ahead.

Charles watched Raven play, the blue of her skin made bluer by her white dress.

* * *

As it turns out, the only help Erik needs is the address and directions to the hotel in Georgetown. The help he _wants_ , which is for Charles to tell half of Maryland, the capitol district, and northern Virginia to stay in their offices for an extra half-hour or so, requires a minor miracle, not a telepath. Especially, Charles says tartly, not a telepath who'd spent the better part of his day directing traffic along the I-95 corridor.

"And anyway, I think I've broken enough laws for you already," Charles adds.

Erik only laughs. Charles struggles to unpaste the side of his face from the window and sit upright. His spine wants to bend permanently to the shape of the seat; his back twinges with the crack of each vertebra as he straightens,, a good kind of hurt as opposed to the roiling headache from earlier. Hesitantly he tests himself, sighs when his reaching out – in this case to Erik, conveniently close and thinking about nothing more complex than stretching his legs – doesn’t bring with it the blind, stabbing pain from earlier.

He only has the name of the hotel and not directions, but a stop at a gas station gets them what they need. Erik listens intently to the cashier's instructions, not bothering to write them down, and nods impatiently whenever the kid stops to describe a landmark or say when they've gone too far.

"You have almost perfect memory, and I have a perfect sense of direction," he says as they turn away and head out the door. Charles ruthlessly suppresses a twinge of fear as Erik opens the door without laying a hand on it – he can't, though, quite ignore the cashier's start of surprise, the _shit, I didn't even know_ that Charles hates – and settles for glowering when Erik steps to the side, bows with a flourish, and says "After you, vicar."

"Oh for God's sake," Charles growls.

At least Erik isn't lying about his sense of direction. It comes, he says with obvious pride, as a convenient benefit of his abilities. An affinity for magnetism means a sensitivity to magnetic fields, including the Earth's. If he weren't exhausted, and disoriented by Erik's perpetually confusing presence, Charles would be impressed.

"So what you're saying is, you're a giant homing pigeon," Charles says. "Turn right after this light."

Erik's snort of laughter is both sudden and undignified, which gratifies Charles immensely. He also almost misses the turn, which is even better.

"I prefer to think of myself as a shark," Erik says once he's recovered. The happiness he projects is curiously uncomplicated, untangled by sarcasm and Erik's usual dark humor.

Charles relaxes and thinks, with the half-drunk sort of exhaustion that belongs to the overtired and overheated, that Erik is best like this. And they aren't awkward together, which is even better.

Maybe Erik's sudden good mood is leaching into him – or maybe the other way around, or maybe it's a feedback loop – because arriving at the hotel doesn't turn into the ordeal Charles has spent part of the day secretly dreading. Erik resists the temptation to float the Mustang's keys to the valet (he does not, however, resist the temptation to say _A valet, Charles, really?_ ) and Charles, without being asked, silently instructs the doorman, the busboy, and the concierge to ignore the presence of the tall, scruffy young man in the leather jacket.

He has less energy left to deal with the concierge's disapproval. The man's patrician face conceals it under the mask of fine-grained neutrality that is its default setting; beneath the skull, though, that brain has Charles weighed, measured, and found sadly inappropriate to his surroundings. With some satisfaction, Charles gives his name, _Charles Xavier, you should have a reservation for me, for this weekend_ , and he has to preen a little when Erik snorts at the way the concierge leaps into action.

The Xavier name – or, Charles supposes, the Xavier credit card – can get things done almost as efficiently as Charles's telepathy. Within moments, a busboy has Charles's suitcase, briefcase, and Erik's duffel bag piled on the trolley, and the two of them installed in a fifth-floor room overlooking parks and gardens that run down to the Potomac.

"Far out," Erik says, twitching the curtains aside to peer out the window, and he only feels like he's exaggerating slightly.

Charles begins to set out his things, the concentration on staking out his corner of the bathroom counter – namely, placing his shaving kit in one of them – inordinate, to mask the uncomfortable awareness they're going to have to share a bed. In the mirror, his face is sweaty, blue eyes wide and vague with exhaustion, and _you can get through this_ , he tells himself, sighs at the unconvinced expression on his face. Erik drifts across his field of vision, his reflection bending to inspect the contents of the bedside table drawer, the card for room service, _room service, Charles_ , he thinks, clearly meaning to be overheard.

"Order up what you like," he says, "I feel too tired to go out myself."

"Carte blanche?" Erik's reflection turns to him, mouth curved with mockery. "I didn't know your expense account with MIT was so generous. I have to blow my director to give me travel funds."

Very carefully, Charles steers his mind away from the thoughts, and images, associated with Erik's words. He says something vague about sorting the details with his department, knows Erik senses he's on Charles's dime anyway. How that sticks with Erik's pride, Charles has no idea.

"Consider it gas money," he says.

* * *

Charles tried to be bored unobtrusively while Moira chattered about Vassar with a fellow graduate, and tried not to be bored at the stray thoughts he picked up here and there. Four other mutants were in the crowd, and almost all of them spilled over with a desperate hope that no one would notice what they were. One of them, a girl whose power was to do with manipulating the light spectrum (Charles knew this because she was projecting _please no one from the Society come up to me, please please please_ ), almost made Charles sick with secondhand worry, and laced through it was the confused sort of anger that came whenever he met another mutant who felt the best and safest thing to do was hide away.

He forced himself to concentrate on his terrible beer and, when the conversation turned to him again, launched reflexively into the biography he supposed all graduate students developed for conversations like these: born in New York to English parents, moved to England when he was ten, Trinity College at Cambridge for undergraduate – and _there_ , the shock of another mutant using his or her power and not bothering to hide it.

"What did you major in?" the Vassar friend asked, impatient at having to ask twice.

"Read in biochemistry, genetics, and anthropology," Charles said automatically. "Excuse me."

Even if he had been clear on the other side of campus – on the other side of Boston, maybe on the other side of the state – he could have closed his eyes and pointed directly to the mutant who was casually levitating a dining hall spoon in the air while tying it in knots. He saw Charles looking, of course he did, because Charles was anything but subtle in his interest, and the pleasure of catching someone's eye was visceral, heady, and _I could get drunk off this_ , Charles thought.

He abandoned Moira to her Vassar friend and twisted his way through the crowd. Thoughts about lodestones and iron filings chased through his brain, and excitement and a bit of caution, disbelief that someone could be this unrepentantly _open_ about what he was and what he could do. Between them, the knotted spoon rotated slowly, the light slithering off its angles and edges so that it appeared to transform endlessly, changing shapes the longer Charles watched it.

"I might try to create a Moebius strip next," the guy said.

Charles dragged his attention from the spoon to the student's face, and suddenly he caught the name as though the other mutant had tossed it to him, _Erik Lehnsherr_.

"I'm Charles Xavier," he said, and impulsively offered Erik a hand. _I'm like you_.

He braced himself for the surprise and the recoil. Erik _was_ surprised, he felt that – in fairness, most people were surprised when they heard the voice in their head – but he absorbed it quickly, transmuted it into interest.

"Erik Lehnsherr," Erik said, "but I suppose you already knew that."

"I did," Charles admitted. "I'm sorry, it's the – " he gestured vaguely with his hand, a reflex he detested, " – I can't really turn it off, you know. I catch things at times. I apologize."

"Don't apologize to me for what you can do," Erik said, abruptly and with a quiet passion that set Charles back a step. "The world makes us do that enough as it is."

* * *

Charles aches to ask why Erik enjoys poking at him, and why, out of the hundreds of graduate students available to him at MIT alone, he'd fixed on Charles as the person he would torment for the next four years. They've never had occasion to take classes together, and Charles – he'd told Moira this with very great sincerity – would rather have his eyes put out with a rusty fork than go to one of the interdepartmental functions again. In the very least, he wants to know why Erik would condescend to go to something like the meet-and-greet, when the last thing he'd seemed to want to do was meet anyone except Charles.

He does ask, abruptly, and decides immediately to blame it on his exhaustion and the fact that they're halfway through a bottle of the hotel's most expensive Scotch, and there will be hell to pay tomorrow.

"You couldn't pay me to go to one of those," Erik says through a mouthful of steak. "I'm not entirely sure why I went to the first one to begin with."

"Morbid curiosity?"

Erik laughs, one of his warm, unreserved laughs. They seem very rare, a favor Erik only rarely bestows. It's better than the Scotch, headier, and makes Charles think of foolish and happy things.

"Maybe," Erik muses, "maybe I went to see if I wasn't alone."

"What, like existentially?"

"No. Idiot." The insult is affectionate. Despite the height difference even sitting down (they're having a picnic on the very expensive bedspread on the most sinfully comfortable bed in the world), he manages to look _up_ at Charles with those pale, striking eyes, a head dip that is unexpectedly shy and hesitant coming from someone who exudes confidence.

"You mean…" Charles gestures between the two of them. "Another mutant."

Erik nods and appropriates the Scotch. "I'd gotten the Society line, but they didn't strike me as my kind of people."

Charles, half-drunk on the alcohol and the dozen surprises of the day (Erik and his Mustang, breaking state and federal laws _without getting caught_ , eating a three-course meal on a bed like they're exceptionally tame rock stars), nods muzzily and watches the animate calligraphy of Erik's neck as he swallows. Erik hands the bottle back, and his eyes lock with Charles's, and it's like a brick to the head, _pow_ – a comic-book sound, almost, it shocks him that much.

"So what will you do with yourself while I'm at the conference?" Charles asks, feeling a bit desperate. The air is close, hot with something Charles can't put a name to. No, he _can_ , but the moment he does, it'll become real and he won't be able to pretend to ignore it. "I mean, genetics _is_ quite riveting, so I couldn't blame you…"

"It's the capital of the most powerful nation in the world," Erik says wryly. He's withdrawn into himself again, cool as you please where Charles is still congested with want. "We're in Washington, Charles. I'm sure I can think of something."

* * *

Charles stepped into his first Basic Biological Principles lab a month before the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in _Allerdyce v. Schrader_ , to settle the question as to whether individuals possessing "genetically-based abilities" could be compelled to reveal their status as a mutant. The news had come up on the radio that morning, and Charles sensed the buzz from Harvard Law even from the depths of class-related distraction.

"It's bullshit," Erik said later that morning, when they ran into each other – almost literally – in a coffee shop near Charles's lab building. For reasons not quite clear to Charles, they shared an outdoor table, Erik stretched out to bask in the September sun. Despite the carelessness with which he took up part of the sidewalk and the space under Charles's side of the table, Erik had an alertness to him, the slightest tension in muscle and bone, telltale, sideways flicker of an eye to judge how Charles was going to take that.

"Are you talking about _Allerdyce_ or having to teach hopeless freshmen about elementary engineering terminology?" he asked, to stall. That had been the topic of Erik's last rant, a sudden encounter outside the engineering library when Charles had just been passing through on his way to somewhere else.

"You know," Erik said accusingly.

"If we're talking about unfair competition, though," Charles began.

"All competition is unfair," Erik interrupted. "Anyway, what if your mutation allowed you to better meet the requirements of a position than someone who didn't? You should be allowed to use anything to your advantage."

"That's very Machiavellian of you," Charles said, and swallowed a too-hot mouthful of coffee.

"Machiavelli only said 'consider the means,'" Erik said, "not that the end justifies them automatically." He toyed aimlessly with one of the little metal gewgaws he carried with him everywhere, a pocket puzzle made of interlinked rings. A few students walking by looked askance at the floating metal toy and the two young men at the table, and Charles recoiled a little from the uncertainty.

"This really bothers you, doesn't it?" Erik floated the toy over to Charles.

For a heartbeat Charles thought Erik was going to drop it in his coffee, but at Erik's impatient grunt, held a hand out. The puzzle dropped into the cup of his palm, the links chiming softly. Erik drew in his ludicrously long legs and stood, an effortless, flowing movement, and Charles squinted up at him, hating the sudden disadvantage. With the sun behind him, Charles couldn't make out Erik's face, but could see it in his mind's eye, the cool reserve, the impatience hot underneath.

"I've considered the means," Erik said softly, "and I'm okay with them, because they're part of who I am. Maybe you should try it sometime."

* * *

As it happens, Erik's idea of visiting the nation's capital is making up a nametag, pinning it to his jacket – his leather jacket – and introducing himself as one of Charles's colleagues in the biology department.

"Maybe I want to hear your paper," Erik says calmly when Charles drags him aside to demand what he's doing and why he's there. The hangover that's occupying most of the space in Charles's skull leaves little room for anger, or any kind of coherent, authoritative reaction to Erik's presence. Or, for that matter, the ten thousand things he needs to keep in mind for his talk.

"Could you just…" Charles scowls at Erik, who wears his hangover gracefully, mostly in the slope of his shoulders and an unshaven face. _Go out somewhere for a while_ , he suggests mentally, because if Erik wants Charles to embrace who he is… well, who Charles is wants Erik to give him some fucking space for once.

It occurs to him that, for a person he's only seen sporadically over the past few years, Erik's staked out his own territory in Charles's brain. He's moved in somehow, tangled himself up in Charles's synapses, the dark little voice that rides his left shoulder and tells him he could be so much more, so much more than MIT's pet mutant geneticist. _More than anyone's pet anything_.

Conscience pricks at him and he shoves it back, and pointedly doesn't watch Erik stalk out of the hotel.

* * *

Despite being primarily a research fellow, Charles's responsibilities as a second-year student included two semesters of teaching. He welcomed the chance – he was, as Raven said with teasing honesty, a born lecturer – and genuinely enjoyed explaining even the driest details of photosynthesis to twenty students who should have been paying attention in the professor's lecture earlier in the week. The only downside was the grading. The never-fucking-ending grading.

They knew he was a telepath – joys of living in a pre- _Allerdyce_ world – and it worked to his advantage. No possibility of any of them cheating on their tests, they kept their thoughts carefully empty of distraction, and they even seemed to _want_ to learn. That they stepped warily around him and got out of lab as fast as possible… Charles could ignore that. Maybe.

"Your problem is, you want everyone to like you," Raven had said during one of their once-weekly phone conversations. "It's not a _problem_ … it's just, well, it's probably not very healthy, psychologically."

"I find I get far more accomplished with fear," Erik told him. He'd somehow ferreted out Charles in the dark, cramped hellhole that was Charles's office, stolen a chair from some other student's carrel, and made himself comfortable. "God, I fucking hate teaching."

"I bet you secretly love it," Charles said absently as he tried to decipher one student's hieroglyphics. "Does this look like an H-12 or H-17?"

Erik glanced at the paper Charles held out. "Just mark it wrong. If you can't read it on the first try, there's no point in wasting your time. And next time they won't write like three-year-olds. Jesus, Xavier." He pulled a flask out of his jacket pocket and took a drink. "Also, there isn't the tiniest spark of love in me for _any_ of my students, except maybe the ones who never show up."

"You could repay me for taking up my valuable time by giving me some of that," Charles said pointedly. Erik grinned his shark-grin and handed the flask over. It was battered and shone dully silver in the one yellow bulb the office had. Charles tasted it experimentally, still warm from Erik's mouth, silvery taste at the edge of his tongue, brandy finally. "It's good," he said, and handed it back.

Grinning, Erik took the flask and raised it in salute and drank again.

"So, are you here to badger me about mutant rights and becoming one with the mutant universe, or just to bitch about your submoronic students?"

"Eh." Erik shrugged noncommittally.

"The Supreme Court is expected to rule on _Allerdyce_ in a couple of weeks."

"What they rule shouldn't matter," Erik said. He was staring at the ceiling, apparently hypnotized by a water stain. "We shouldn't have to have the government's say-so for us to be able to say what we are."

Charles thought briefly of his father, _You must always look out for Raven_ , his mother's distrustful and cold silences whenever the issue of his abilities came up. _No one knows quite what to think_ , and while he trusted – for reasons he still struggled with (Raven called him an "unnatural optimist") – that one day people _would_ know what to think, and it would be good, getting to that one day would require caution, negotiation, understanding, and everything else that constituted the direct opposite of Erik's approach.

"Forgive me if this is presumptuous, but what did your parents think of your… your powers. When they manifested."

Erik played absently with the buttons on his shirt, fingers sliding across the concave run of his stomach. "My mother thought it was helpful. She had hurt her back as a girl, and it was useful for me to be able to reach pans and such down from the shelves." Erik stared hard at him, and Charles felt unexpectedly exposed, as though Erik were the telepath. "But if you're asking me if she _told_ me anything, she told me to remember who I am." A tug with invisible fingers on Charles's watch, a reminder. "And what I am is this."

* * *

Part of who Charles is happens to be quite a brilliant academic, thank you. Raven teases him about it constantly, but he has to accept it because he knows it's true, and the strange ebb and flow of academic life is something he can't imagine himself leaving. The American Genetics Association conference, held in a collection of buildings in and around Georgetown University, bustles with low-key energy, a buzz of voices that occasionally spikes upward when a few people get excited, mostly convivial but sometimes hostile when old disagreements bubble up. Perhaps because of Erik, he finds himself reaching out to wander alongside other people's passing thoughts, and it's _easy_ , and he relaxes into the stream and lets it pull him a little.

No other mutants ping off his radar, not with Erik somewhere else – the tiniest _stretch_ and there he is, wandering aimlessly along a Potomac footpath – and Charles isn't entirely surprised. So few of them seem to be drawn to the field, even though, as far as Charles can tell, it offers them the best chance to show other people what they are, and to say there's no need to fear. _Don't you see?_ he almost, almost asks the question of a senior scholar ambling by. The man offers him a cordial nod and a handshake, along with congratulations on his progress – Charles's advisor has been in contact. He keeps the question to himself, mines the man's surface thoughts for conversation, and allows himself to go along with it.

He worries at the thread of his thoughts, though, hypotheses floating at the tips of his fingers, waiting for him to grasp them. The old models of human-Neanderthal, usually used as justification for depriving mutants of citizenship rights (rejected by the Supreme Court in _Drake vs. The United States_ , which overturned the Mutant Registration Act), lay at the root of anti-mutant sentiment. What if they were wrong? What if the archaeological record showed (here Charles struggles for a moment) some indication of coexistence, that one group slowly, inevitably melted into the other?

Thoughts for another day, he supposes. His talk is coming up, on something quite different – _radical_ , for this group of scholars, maybe. Compulsively, he checks his briefcase again for the paper, neatly typed and annotated, a sheaf of handouts because he doesn't trust the overhead projector to work. Erik had looked over the paper last night, reading out selections in an accent that Charles insisted was _not at all_ like the way he spoke, each syllable more and more pretentious until Charles telepathically and threatened him with death by aneurysm, and he would make it happen, too, if Erik didn't knock it off.

He'd had to do it telepathically because he'd been laughing too hard, _you know, you sound like my tutor at Trinity_. When Erik laughed, it had been full-body, joyous, eyes squinched shut and there'd been flailing involved too. And then he'd _looked_ at Charles, grinning helplessly, and shaken his head, undignified in a way Charles had difficulty reconciling with calm, cool Erik.

Reflexively, he reaches out again, a delicate mental tap on Erik's shoulder. He sees through Erik's eyes the heat mirages coming up off the distant Capitol, dots of people on the far shore, and he tastes, all of a sudden, the even warmer rush of coffee, the smooth flex of tongue and throat as Erik swallows. Before he can sink deeper – and he wants to, oh how he wants to – he reminds himself of what, exactly, he's doing, and tells Erik he can come back if he wants.

The session, devoted to mutagenesis and challenges to traditional conceptions of Darwinian evolution, is packed. Charles sets himself to tending to his mental walls, no use in being overwhelmed before he even begins, and almost misses the now-familiar presence of Erik slipping into the stuffy room.

Absently, he shuffles his papers and listens to the session moderator introduce the panel. He's going last, which means most people might already be too bored to pay attention; it also means he'll get the first round of questions, delivered by those who've decided to remain vigilant the entire time. The room, one of the university's seminars with stadium seating, is both too large and too small with so many people crowding close, _far_ too small when he can feel the pressure of Erik's mind like a caress across the back of his neck.

When it's his turn, he makes his way to the podium, absently straightening his tie. The paper he sets in front of him seems very insignificant, a cautious thing next to Erik's challenges – next to the memory of Erik needling him about what he is for the past four years – but it's maybe what non-mutants need to hear.

 _Successful response to environmental stress has long been established as one of the primary means by which species evolve_ , it begins, and his voice follows the line of the sentence neatly, _and with the discoveries of Franklin, Watson, and Crick, we gained the ability to acquire deeper knowledge of the chemical carriers of phenotypic change – even to manipulate them, under certain circumstances._ He thinks of his father's work, a brief flicker of memory, no more; he reads on. _These studies have been carried out primarily by world governments, and their results, aside from those revealed to public journalists, remain classified. Today, I hope to open discussion on a topic thus far elided in scientific literature, although pressing for many citizens across the world today: the occurrence of macromutation in the wild human genome and the reasons for their appearance._

The answer, he thinks, lies somewhere between Erik's brazenness, his refusal to give way to other people's fear and his own conflict and need for security. It _has_ to be in demystifying what mutation is, that difference isn't something to be feared, that five thousand years from now – maybe only five hundred – the human race will be different anyway.

Erik would say something pessimistic, Charles is sure. Americans, at least, haven't done so well with difference. "It's human nature," Erik might say, before saying something else similarly aggravating. "They'll always fear what they think they can't understand."

At the moment, though, Erik isn't saying anything. He's projecting, though, and he's like light whenever Charles glances up from his paper. He's fierce and proud, nodding encouragement with every word, and he's _with_ Charles, every word. And the thing is, Charles doesn't even need his telepathy to convince these people, he thinks; he has the force of conviction behind him, for the first time in years, and as he finishes, _I hope very much that future investigations on the topic will address the needs of generations to come_ (carefully diplomatic), he almost says _generations like mine_ , because Erik's right, they shouldn't hide what they are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suppose there'll be three chapters after all. Unexpectedly I got obsessed with the backstory.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter three**

One night halfway through spring semester their third year, Charles and Moira sat on their sofa and watched the nightly news. Charles always approached the evening reports with some dread, but made himself watch them anyway out of a sense of civic duty. Moira, whose work required her to keep up with current affairs, muttered and cursed her way through the broadcast.

The newscaster finished talking about the most recent disasters in Vietnam, and violence at some of the anti-war protests. Moira made a disgusted noise, _honestly, if you're not angry, you're not paying attention_ , simmering with commentary she'd wait to unleash on him later. Charles had abandoned the pretense of reading the draft of a lab report and had begun to play with the puzzle Erik had given him – or he'd inadvertently stolen from Erik, one of the two – last year.

 _In other national news_ , droned the anchorman, voice all business and neutrality, _Senator Robert E. Kelly, sponsor of the now-defunct Mutant Registration Act of 1953, has called on presidential candidates to make new mutant control legislation part of their platforms. Such legislation would call for a formal committee to study the impact of mutants or post-humans on society, and propose efforts to, as Senator Kelly said in remarks today, "ameliorate their effect on everyday Americans."_

He didn't really hear much after that, only the curious, dead silence of the television clicking off. Moira's warm presence returned and settled close by him, pushing his textbooks and papers to the side.

"Are you okay?" Moira asked.

"No." He wanted to be angry with her, because she was _normal_ , one of the everyday Americans, and he didn't need her pity, or compassion, or anything, just the simple, decent honor of being treated like he wasn't a criminal in waiting. Reluctantly, he brushed a finger through her thoughts, and all she was filled with was genuine worry for him, and anger for Kelly and the people he represented. It wasn't fair to her, he knew, but he couldn't help it.

He exhaled; the breath was shakier than he wanted. "I thought this was over."

"It's a fringe group, but the MRA still has its supporters."

"Not so fringe, if they have a senior senator wanting to resurrect it."

The Mutant Registration Act had needed six years to work its way through the judiciary before the Supreme Court got hold of it and declared it unconstitutional. In that time, almost a hundred thousand people had been registered, mostly those with visible mutations, mutations they couldn't control, or those who'd tried to be discreet but had found themselves turned in by neighbors, friends, or coworkers. After his father's death, Charles's mother had kept Raven sequestered in the mansion until she could be sure Raven could control her ability to change.

Six justices had ruled to overturn, three to uphold, and that three men thought Charles's genes, Raven's genes, deprived them of the right to protection made him so incandescently _furious_ just thinking about it, Moira recoiled.

"We moved a year after the MRA was passed," Charles said, once he'd reined himself in again. He tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling, blank white, a screen against which he could see Raven's blue, miserable face, his mother taking him aside and asking him if he knew _anything_ about how to help her look normal. He'd started being the expert then, he and his adopted sister fumbling their way through exercises to teach her how to hold her shape without the tiniest flicker of relaxation. "She hated it so much, but if she'd been exposed… I would have been, too. So as soon as Raven thought she was ready, we left for England."

"There's no way they'll bring the MRA back," Moira said. Her fingers folded around his hand, thumb playing across his knuckles. "When Arizona tried to institute its own "voluntary" registration program, the Ninth Circuit ruled against it, and Chambers used _Drake_ as precedent."

"They'll find some way around it, politicians always do." He checked himself to be sure he wasn't bleeding over rage and fear into Moira. "If it's not a list, it's going to be something else. Or they'll make businesses and private citizens compile their lists for them. Patient records, school records, things like that."

He toyed absently with the puzzle Erik had dropped in his palm last year. It felt like ordinary iron – and it was ridiculous, how some part of him thought it should feel any different, as if Erik had to have left some trace in the metal – although its maker had twisted it ingeniously, interlocking bars and rings that could be disjoined if you figured out the trick. Charles had worked it out easily enough, but had never been able to bring himself to carry out the solution and take the puzzle apart. The metal warmed in his hand and soothed him, even as he imagined Erik listening to this same report and tearing the TV apart.

"It's just Kelly stirring shit," Moira was saying. "When people realized that the MRA was going to involve surveillance, maybe the government removing kids from homes, that was when the backlash started. The courts recognized mutants as American citizens who are entitled to full protection before the law, and that's damn hard to change."

"Your faith is very touching," Charles sighed. "Forgive me if I don't share it."

"There's nothing to forgive." Moira said, and bent in and kissed him on the cheek. "I might feel the same, if I were in your place."

He thought about calling Raven out in California and asking her if she'd heard. She would have, he figured – the Berkeley mutant groups would be all over this news (and probably were already) – and what would he say, other than "Have you heard the news?" _Be careful, Raven, please_ , which wouldn't be welcome. She'd heard him say that for almost twenty years. _You might be with friends, but you never know who you can trust_ , not without Charles there to vet her acquaintances, her friends, potential dates.

She'd put up with that for years, right up until the moment she'd thrust her acceptance letter at him.

* * *

"'Charles the Great,'" Erik cackles, and brushes an imaginary tear from his eye. "'Charles the Great.'"

"Oh, you're very clever. And don't laugh," Charles says haughtily. "It's _true_." Because it is true. He _is_ pretty great.

"He was brilliant today," Erik tells one of the hippies at their table.

Part of Charles wants to ask _really?_ , out of some ridiculous need for validation – Raven would have something to say about that too – but he dips into Erik's thoughts instead, the heady gold-red-liquid rush of them. He wouldn't mind having more, one taste nowhere near enough, even though _more _would definitely be taking liberties, and Erik's not the kind of person you take liberties with in the first place, even pressed side-to-side in a tiny dive bar somewhere… Charles searches through his own muddled thoughts. Somewhere.__

 _"We're celebrating," Erik had told him when he'd dragged Charles from the clutches of a group of researchers, claiming Charles the Great had prior commitments, and what prior commitments Charles had wanted to know, but Erik hadn't answered._

 _"I could read your mind," he'd threatened, and Erik had slid him that sly, sly grin, and said no he wouldn't – "You _want_ surprises, Charles," he'd said, and Charles had been forced to agree._

Erik and his surprise have them almost plastered together in the corner of the seediest bar Charles has ever seen in his life. Granted, that's not saying much, but it makes some of the Oxford pubs look fresh and youthful, and those pubs have been there since there was a university there at which students could study and have hangovers. The bar – the _shed_ , Charles corrects himself – leans precariously against the side of the road, so ramshackle the breeze from passing traffic should have blown it over long ago. The road itself heads out into the Piedmont, with the city lights left behind and the forest in ridges that slowly rise up to the Appalachians and twilight.

The building is smaller than it looks on the inside, the bar huddled against the far wall and barely containing the large, sweaty, and t-shirted man behind it. An arrangement of bottles, cloudy glass and green and mostly unmarked, perches on the shelves, and Charles suspects some of their contents don't match what the few labels say they are. In front of the bar thirty or so people sit jammed together, some at the threadbare booths and tables that look about to tip over, others on whatever spare space of floor they can pull up.

Erik points commandingly to Charles's glass, which is still half full of something brown and severely potent. The girl next to him smiles at him, eyes dreamy and green and hazed with whatever it is Charles has been breathing in for five minutes. He reminds her of someone, but none of the memories he can find match with his face – bits and pieces, maybe, of different people that the pot and the moonshine blur together. _You have pretty eyes_ , she tells him, _pretty mouth_ , and the pads of her fingers are a little rough when they rest briefly against his lips.

He's drunk already on the clumsy weaving of her thoughts, and high off the smoke from the two boys sharing a toke the next table over. In the shadows somewhere – the cramped interior has, somehow, expanded into new dimensions when Charles wasn't looking – another girl strums the opening chords of a song on her guitar, raising her voice unsteadily, and the notes hang in the air and shiver. They press against him like thoughts, solid enough to reach out and touch.

"I think I'm high," Charles confides to Erik, who is the one immovable thing in the room, sturdy and solid against Charles's increasingly ephemeral body. He considers the glass in front of him. "Also possibly I am drunk."

"Just possibly?" Erik's voice wavers a little, and when he turns to look at Charles, his eyes are glossy with the alcohol and a bit of a high of his own.

"Possibly," Charles agrees. "It's… everyone is quite beautiful now."

The girl, _Joanie, I'm Joanie_ , next to him giggles. "I mean," he clarifies, "your mind. It's very beautiful. _Groovy_ , even."

"My mind?" She sifts her long, reddish hair through her fingers and giggles.

"Hmmmmm," Charles hums. There really aren't words to describe what a person's mind is like, and he tries to explain this to Erik, because it's _important_ , "It's like _colors_ ," he says, "colors you don't see. It's like you feel them, but with… with your bones." That isn't right, either. He reaches out, briefly hypnotized by the slow, blurry drag of his hand through the air, to grasp something invisible. "We need new words."

"You can work on that," Erik says solemnly into his glass, "tomorrow, Professor."

"Not tomorrow." Eventually, maybe. It's not important. What's _important_ is that Erik's mouth is moist, breath fogging the glass. His throat is a beautiful, beautiful thing as he swallows. _Erik_ is beautiful, someone _just like him_ , someone different, and he wishes he could run his hands all up and down the lovely textures of Erik's thoughts. He thinks this with all his heart and other neighboring organs, and hopes Erik doesn't mind.

The flare of heat from Erik says he doesn't mind at all.

It occurs to Charles to ask how Erik found a place like this, on a road that's a back road off a back road off a back road off the highway. The Mustang dozes outside alongside a motley collection of Volkswagens, all of which are headed (he gleans this from Ted, Joanie's boyfriend) back from the protests on the Mall, all of them plastered with slogans and paint, and one with a cracked rearview from a police baton. The question slides easily away from him, pushed to the side by Erik's drowsy voice explaining that they're students down for the weekend and Kevin (Ted's best friend; they're from Peoria) telling Erik he and Chaz here are plenty welcome.

The welcome comes along with an unlit joint, which Erik graciously tucks in his shirt pocket. Charles lets himself meld into Erik's side as they listen to Ted and Joanie tell them about what they're doing, the underground paper Ted publishes in Peoria, their idea for an anarcho-syndicalist commune out west, where Joanie's sister and husband have a ranch.

"Teddy's studying agriculture," Joanie murmurs. Her voice is rich, weighted with smoke and whiskey. "He has a book and everything. You guys got any, you know…" She wanders off in search of the world, smiles her gap-toothed smile when she finds it. "Skill sets?"

In answer, Erik's keys levitate off the table. The light from the candles and the one dying, naked bulb slithers dully off the metal, and when the keys clink together they chime like small bells. A few coins from the table join them, turning idle somersaults, acrobatics that Erik directs invisibly

"What a trip," one of the boys, this one in appropriated buckskin and snakeskin boots, says. A few others cluster around, a blur of eye-wrenching plaid and paisley and nonsense patterns, staring with eyes that want to stay unfocused, but the surprise or fear – if there is any – is slow and oozy like molasses, and alchemizes into appreciation.

"Show-off," Charles mumbles, and flops bonelessly against Erik's shoulder.

"I thought you British types were supposed to be able to hold your alcohol," Erik says. From below, his grin is wider than it usually appears, and with drunken pleasure drawing lines in the corners of his eyes. In the periphery of his vision, Charles watches the keys descend slowly to the table again.

"Bitchin," Ted says, and Kevin agrees. "Fuckin' A, man."

"Going to finish that?" Erik asks, eyebrow cocked teasingly as he nods at Charles's drink, and damn it, it's for British pride, and defiantly, Charles swallows the rest of whatever's in his glass. It can't hurt, and it can't possibly make him drunker-higher-any-more-gone than he already is. Erik's mind is intoxicating, it's perfect, so much _potential_ that even Erik doesn't realize he has, it's almost a pity Charles is too blitzed to appreciate it at the moment.

"So," Joanie drawls, "you guys know any other tricks?"

* * *

Not long after he turned seven, and two weeks after he told his father about the lady in the tea parlor, Charles Xavier stood outside an airplane while four workers carried his father's coffin from the cargo bay into the waiting hearse. Next to him, his mother stood in a brittle silence, the grief only just contained behind her veil and the taut quiver of her mouth. Raven, who had been inconsolable with Charles's own refracted pain and refused to be left behind, squirmed in her nanny's grip until she got free and found her way under Charles's arm. She clung to his suffocating waistcoat, her little hand alternating pink-blue-pink until Charles collected himself enough to send soothing _calm down, calm down, look normal_ thoughts at her.

(That same week, when he was nine, Erik's mother moved the two of them from a friend's flat in Bristol, across the sea, and into a small flat of their own in Killarney, close enough to the cathedral that it seemed as though the steeple windows peered into the kitchen, and close enough for the great bells to resonate quietly in the back of his mind, although at the time he didn't know the quiet hum for what it was. He understood distantly that he was different, for this reason and for the fact that his mother still struggled with English, let alone Irish, and he would endure the indignity of strangers ignoring her presence while speaking to him so he could translate for her.

(Almost twenty years later, he would tell Charles this, and about the day she discovered the secret he kept close, and only said _alles ist gut, Erik_ , all is well, and asked him if perhaps he could lift the cast-iron skillet down from its hook for her.)

* * *

Away from the muddled conviviality of the roadhouse, Charles isn't quite as high or drunk as he'd thought he was. The buzz lingers, and his mind still wants to blur into the nearest awareness it can find – in this case, Erik, stretched neatly out along the slope heading down to the Tidal Basin – but his body anchors him again, and the world feels more real, every object in its proper place. The moonshine from earlier lies in wait, the hangover lurking at the base of his skull, and "Hair of the dog," Erik says, and hands Charles the bottle of Scotch.

"Fancy dog," Charles says, and drinks inelegantly from the bottle. He has vague memories of stumbling back into the light and refinement of the hotel, ordering the good Scotch, the obscenely expensive Scotch, and stumbling back out again. "Somewhere, William Grant is spinning in his grave."

Charles also has vague memories of someone – Ted, or was it Kevin, they're all a blur of facial hair and blown pupils – saying _wicked magic trick, man_ as he went around the room and read minds, and tried to explain about his theories concerning the astral plane (made up on the spot) and the interconnectedness of All Being. Kevin had quoted _Siddhartha_ at him and Charles had been on the border of nirvana when Erik had bent close and suggested they head out.

Now they're sprawled on the narrow spit of land between the Tidal Basin and the river, the Jefferson Memorial a white gleam in the corner of Charles's vision and the Washington Monument a spear visible through the trees and across the basin. The night hangs heavy and low, city lights banishing the stars but making their own, unsteady galaxies in the water. The park is a barrier of silence between them and the dim hustle and rush of the city, and if anyone strays close, Charles quietly steers them away.

Idly, he watches as Erik digs Ted's joint from his pocket and hunts for matches. Erik's fingers are gratifyingly clumsy. "It's amazing we got back down here without _dying_."

"I wouldn't have let us die," Erik says with great dignity. He gets his matches out and lights the joint, the flame blazing momentarily before fading to something gentler. "At least," he sighs on the exhale, "I would have tried very, very hard. Besides, you were having visions or something."

Another detail from earlier: Erik's fingers running across the bump of his wrist, dipping briefly into the humid cup of his palm. He shivers, recalling that, and Erik's hand steady on his back to guide him through the quiet surge of bliss to the door and out into the night.

Somewhere between the roadhouse door and the Mustang, Charles had decided he'd needed to kiss Erik. The memory slowly filters back into clarity, like a lens focusing, Erik's fingers insinuating themselves under his shirt, warmer even than the warm mugginess of a Virginia summer night, and Erik's mouth methodical on his and his thoughts twining pleasure-want-yes-so-perfect through Charles's cortex.

Despite the joint, Erik's still spiky with dissatisfaction, restless under the skin with it.

Erik offers him the spliff and he accepts it reflexively, admires the soft glow of the embers against the dark and the distant cityscape. The smoke rests thick and pungent in his mouth, curling warmth and dizziness through him. It's bitter on the exhale and he shudders a little, expectant until the drug insinuates itself into his system.

"I asked before, and you never answered… How did you know I was at the train station?"

He means it playfully, but when Erik looks at him, nothing but seriousness sits in his eyes. They're close enough to touch – and they _are_ touching, Erik a solid line of warmth against him – and close enough for Erik's face to be shadows and lines and light, and his pale eyes looking at and _through_ Charles, like Erik is the one who's telepathic.

"Do you still have the puzzle I gave you, back in second year?"

Charles blinks at the non sequitur. "Puzzle?" The memory clicks into place with the emphasis of iron links dropping into his hand. "I do."

Erik lets the silence ride, and in that space Charles's brain fuzzily works its way through the connection between his question and the toy. "You…" His breath skips with realization.

"I happened to overhear Moira talking about your trip," Erik says, "and I… perhaps kept tabs on you. When it happened that you missed your train… well."

"And before that," Charles accuses, rifling through the sudden cache of memories Erik's words bring up: Erik ferreting him out in his office, running into him in the coffee shop, in front of the library, random places around Cambridge – not frequently, but often enough that he'd always been a constant presence in the fringe of Charles's days, an itch just beyond scratching.

"Horse's fucking _arse_." Charles pauses, and figures turnabout is fair play, if Erik's trailed him around silently for four years, the voice he's never been able to quite ignore, the reminder of what he is and what he wants, and how long he's kept himself from both those things. "I think you owe me," he says, and allows himself a smile.

"I know," Erik says, and watches Charles calmly as he says it.

He's kissing Erik, and it's just as good as it was before, Erik kissing him back in his slow, methodical way, smooth, slick slide of his tongue against Charles and he tastes like whiskey and pot, and his mind tastes even better, yielding when Charles presses up into it, into _him_. The closeness of bodies isn't anything like this, even though Erik's chest is perfect against his, and his heart pounds out a drumbeat that echoes in every resonant space in Charles's body – it's sliding through what makes Erik _Erik_ , the twists and tangles and elegant structures of thought-sensation-memory-emotion that there probably can't be words to capture. It's like fractals, or interlace, infinite, changing even as Charles runs along them, impatient, disbelieving, powerful, grateful, angry, _everything_ that Erik was, is, and can be

"I know everything about you now," he says when they break apart. " _Everything_."

Erik, god, Erik doesn't back off, doesn't leave, but curls in closer to him, those illegally long legs twisting through Charles's own, barely enough space between them for Erik to pull Charles's shirt up and off and splay one hand across the stair-step span of his ribs, another in the concavity of his spine. His jacket is… somewhere, and the thin fabric of his t-shirt is entirely too much between the two of them, and it's not until Charles _orders_ him that Erik lets go long enough to tug it over his head. Then they're back together, skin and skin and the sleek, houndish quiver and weave of Erik's torso, and Charles lets himself go blank.

When he comes back to himself, his heart is thundering in his chest, underneath where Erik's mouth is pressed and idly licking at his left nipple. He has a death grip on Erik's hair (soft, thick, the edges auburn and copper where the light is), and Erik doesn't seem to mind.

"Did I…" The heat in him has just as much to do with embarrassment as the warm night and Erik draped on top of him.

"You were perfection," Erik tells him, and leans up to kiss him on the mouth, and Charles can taste himself on Erik's tongue.

* * *

 _His favorite memory of Erik is this_ :

At the end of fourth year, near exams, Charles found himself up late in the library, hunting down sources he was increasingly beginning to suspect were non-existent. Around him the library lay mostly asleep, a handful of devoted or panicked students forming small points of desperation like pins on a map. His body was saturated with coffee, heart buzzing, an engine trying (and failing) to blow off the exhaustion that came with a solid week of agonizing over statistics.

Moira had long since abandoned him to his obsession and gone home, so it was only Charles at their table when he felt it, the unmistakable signature of a mutant exercising his power – and, he realized an instant later, one mutant in particular.

He was up and out of his chair before he realized it, stuffing his papers and books hastily into his satchel, not bothering with his coat. December air closed around him when he ran outside, the damp chill that promised snow and seeped into his bones and made his breath puff white as he jogged from Hayden up the long green stretch of Killian Court, dark and abandoned except for the lone figure standing in front of the steps leading up to the Maclaurin buildings and the great dome.

"Erik?" he panted.

Erik didn't turn from his study of the dome. Charles fought for breath, blinked away the sting of the cold air, and, tearing himself from the hypnosis of the minutely delicate exertion of Erik's power, looked up.

An old Chevrolet balanced atop the dome – not, as was usually the case with cars and typical student hacks, sitting square on its four wheels, but balanced neatly on the fulcrum of its rear fender. One of the massive steel sculptures from Lowell Court stood next to Erik, apparently next in line for transportation.

"What do you think?" Erik asked. He did look at Charles now, not anxiously, not looking for approval, but with a mad, superior grin.

"I think it's amazing," Charles said, surprised into honesty. _You're amazing_ , some treacherous part of him – his id, whatever – whispered, but at least he had enough sense to keep that to himself. "What are you going to do with the sculpture?"

"I may drop it in the river. It's fucking ugly."

"Erik!"

"What?" Erik asked mutinously. "It is."

"Just… stick it up on the pediment or something. They'll have hell getting it down."

"As you wish," Erik murmured. Charles couldn't keep back the thrill, or his own laugh, as Erik's power washed over him, the fierce and instinctual joy of something doing what it was meant to do. Even, Charles supposed as he watched the sculpture hover a few feet above the ground before rising more decisively, playing midnight pranks at exam time. For the first time in a long, long while he let himself ride along the wave of someone else's emotions, twining his thoughts around theirs and letting them become his own, for a while, and if Erik noticed, he didn't say anything.

* * *

Given that he'd spent part of the conference strung on alcohol, pot, and Erik's own intriguing mind – which, Charles thinks, should be considered a controlled substance – it feels as though a year has passed since he was last in Cambridge. Nothing has changed, but everything's different anyway. For an hour after getting back, he stews in his own apartment, listening to Moira's gossip about the program, her fear that the incoming first-years will be insupportably stupid, and then he _has_ to leave.

He's aware of Erik under his skin, melded there permanently, no shaking him anymore and no getting away.

Nothing has changed, but everything's different. Especially now, he supposes, as he hovers in Erik's claustrophobic kitchen.

Erik's apartment looks like it might have been a garret to a garret, a kitchen, living area, and bedroom crammed into two closet-like spaces in the gables of an old house. _Living with other people is out of the question_ , Erik thinks absently at him. The windows look out across the Charles, opening onto a sense of space that the apartment denies. Aside from piles of papers and books at a corner desk, the place is ruthlessly neat in a way Charles has never once associated with graduate student life.

A photograph is magneted to the refrigerator, faded black and white and stained in a corner, dog-eared all around. From within the white borders, a man and woman stare out at him, and Charles can pick out bits of Erik in their faces: his cheekbones here, his mouth there, familiar wrinkles in the corner of the eyes, square chin.

"They had just gotten married," Erik says, coming back from the other room. "Right before the war."

"Is your mum…" _No, she's not dead._

"New York," Erik tells him. He effortlessly fills the tiny space of the kitchen with his presence, crowding Charles back up against the counter. "When I was accepted to Cornell, we both moved here."

 _We couldn't be apart._ Erik has his fingers laced through the loops of Charles's pants to pull them together, is kissing him with a quiet sort of fierceness. On a sigh, Charles opens to him, lets Erik push him up so he's sitting on the counter, Erik's hips bracketed by his knees. Erik rubs distracted patterns on his thighs, edging upward to the untucked tail of his shirt to push it up and aside and get at the skin underneath. The tips of his fingers are rough, exciting, tracing delicately along the line of Charles's belly to his navel.

"Speaking of," Erik says quietly on a breath, pulling back to rest his forehead against Charles's, "I wanted…" The uncertainty comes off him like a tide, and Charles's stomach rolls with it. "I wanted – I said yes to Berkeley. They want me to start in September."

"Yeah." He'd known that much, but it's still unaccountable how much that hurts. Erik's spilling over with too much for him to read clearly, too much to be contained by the bounds of Erik's skull. Charles tries to sort through it all, fear-confusion-hope-want-need- _please_ and can't do it.

"Come with me," Erik says, low, urgent breath against Charles's mouth. The words are half-kisses. "You can write out there – you could see your sister. We can be with – " _People who understand us, people like us._

"I – " Erik's too close, he's too much, pushing Charles out of himself. "I don't know, Erik."

"You _do_ know." Erik's palm is against his face, turning Charles so he can't look away. "You know everything about me, but I know about you, too." He straightens a little, reaching for his habitual composure. "Live a little, Charles."

That's the crux of it, Charles supposes. He can't remember anything like what he did in New York, or in Washington, not anything that felt as good, like stepping out of a muffling suit of armor for the first time to feel the air and the sun on his skin. Because Erik had been right about that, _living_ means living alongside and in other minds – finding a delicate balance between all and nothing, so much harder than even the pain of shutting off a part of himself as central to him as Erik's powers are to Erik, or Raven's to her.

Twenty-five years of a cage, he thinks. Raven had realized it before he had, and picked the lock and gotten out. _We can be together_ , Erik thinks, projecting the thought at Charles with everything in him, and Charles realizes that Erik, despite his fuck-you attitude, the casual display of what he is, is fundamentally just as alone as Charles has been.

"How is it," he asks the question of Erik's right clavicle, "I know you inside and out, and you still surprise me?"

Erik dips his head, hooks Charles's gaze with his own and drags it back to him.

"It's an art form," Erik says, all dry humor, slight laugh lines to ease the tension around his eyes. "Well?"

"I could probably write just as easily out there as here," he concedes.

"You could," Erik agrees, and kisses him. Charles nudges him slightly, a mind-to-mind tap, _I don't know about spending three thousand miles in a car with you, though_ , and Erik laughs, smile curving against Charles's mouth for a long, delicious moment before he pulls Charles off the counter and tugs him to the bedroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At MIT, "hacking" refers to the tradition of challenging and amusing pranks committed by students (e.g. placing the TARDIS on top of the Great Dome), not to breaking into computers or phones or cracking software. Erik would probably have made a name for himself there.
> 
> And, wow, thank you all for reading, kudos'ing, and commenting! It's nice to be sort-of back in the game after not being able to write much for a while, and Charles and Erik are all sorts of fun. There may be more--Woodstock is only a month or so away, after all, and Erik still has to get to California--so there could be one-shots and a few other things in the near future, and also another idea that occurred to me a couple days ago that might be fun to pursue. Thanks again!


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